Privacy...?: The right to be forgotten, or how to edit your history The "Right to be Forgotten" is a very successful political slogan. Like all successful political slogans, it is like a Rorschach test. People can see in it what they want. The debate would sound quite different if the slogan were actually something more descriptive, for example, the "right to delete". The European Commission has now proposed to make the "right to be forgotten" into a law. What is the "right to be forgotten"? On the other end of the spectrum, the "right to be forgotten" is viewed more sweepingly as a new right to delete information about oneself, even if published by a third-party, even if the publication was legitimate and the content was true. As this debate unfolds, the lack of clarity is raising false expectations. We need more public debate about what the "right to be forgotten" should mean.
Lawyers Use Google To Help Pick Jurors When picking a jury, lawyers always try to choose people they believe will find in favor of their client. Of late, some attorneys are taking juror research to a new level. Many lawyers and their jury consultants are heavily using social media sites and other Internet sites to discover the intimate details of potential jurors' lives. In light of the information people are posting about themselves on sites like Facebook, attorneys and jury consultants are able to discover political leanings, income level, sexual orientation, family members and many other personal facts. The question-and-answer portion of jury selection currently known as "voir dire" is becoming "voir Google." Do the courts realize this is going on? The term voir dire means "to speak the truth." In Columbia Missouri, criminal defense attorney Jennifer Bukowsky compiles information about prospective jurors using Facebook, MySpace and Google. "Are you Googling these (prospective jurors)?" "Is that what you are doing?"
Europe proposes a "right to be forgotten" European Union Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding has proposed a sweeping reform of the EU's data protection rules, claiming that the proposed rules will both cost less for governments and corporations to administer and simultaneously strengthen online privacy rights. The 1995 Data Protection Directive already gives EU citizens certain rights over their data. Organizations can process data only with consent, and only to the extent that they need to fulfil some legitimate purpose. They are also obliged to keep data up-to-date, and retain personally identifiable data for no longer than is necessary to perform the task that necessitated collection of the data in the first place. They must ensure that data is kept secure, and whenever processing of personal data is about to occur, they must notify the relevant national data protection agency. The new proposals go further than the 1995 directive, especially in regard to the control they give citizens over their personal information.
A Customer Service Nightmare: Resolving Trademark and Personal Reputation in a Limited Name Space Yesterday, I threw a public hissy fit when I found out that Tumblr’s customer service had acted on a trademark request from a company called Zephoria who had written them to ask that they release my account to them. (Tumblr has since apologized and given me my identity back.) In some ways, I feel really badly for Tumblr – and all other small social media companies – because brokering these issues is not easy. In fact, it’s a PITA. Who has the legitimate right to a particular identity or account name? This is actually not a new issue. Unfortunately, social media has thrown a new wrench into this age-old problem. In the early days of Web2.0, the technology stalwarts and traditional companies rolled their eyes at the millions of consumers using social media to babble on about their lives. Facebook capitalized this, revealing their own interests. Of course, there’s an irony to all of this, an irony that was best articulated by Todd Sieling in a comment left on my blog: Recommended Reading:
The Right to Be Forgotten February 13, 2012 64 Stan. L. Rev. Online 88 At the end of January, the European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights, and Citizenship, Viviane Reding, announced the European Commission’s proposal to create a sweeping new privacy right—the “right to be forgotten.” In theory, the right to be forgotten addresses an urgent problem in the digital age: it is very hard to escape your past on the Internet now that every photo, status update, and tweet lives forever in the cloud. European regulators believe that all citizens face the difficulty of escaping their past now that the Internet records everything and forgets nothing—a difficulty that used to be limited to convicted criminals. In endorsing the new right, Reding downplayed its effect on free speech. But Hendel seems not to have parsed the regulations that were actually proposed three days later on January 25. The first category is the least controversial: “If I post something online, do I have the right to delete it again?”
Appeals Court: No Hacking Required to Be Prosecuted as a Hacker | Threat Level Employees may be prosecuted under a federal antihacking statute for taking computer files that they were authorized to access and using them in a manner prohibited by the company, a federal appeals court has ruled. The case decided 2-1 Thursday by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concerned the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Congress adopted the CFAA in 1986 to enhance the government’s ability to prosecute hackers who accessed computers to steal information or to disrupt or destroy computer functionality. “As long as the employee has knowledge of the employer’s limitations on that authorization, the employee ‘exceeds authorized access’ when the employee violates those limitations. It is as simple as that,” Judge Stephen Trott wrote in an opinion (.pdf) joined by Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain. In 2009, the nation’s largest appellate court ruled that employees are not liable under the antihacking law for accessing their employers’ computers for disloyal purposes. Photo: viteez/Flickr
Our thoughts on the right to be forgotten One of the most talked about concepts in the European Commission’s new Data Protection Regulation proposal is the right to be forgotten. It is, at least in part, a continuation of the rights of access and objection that web users were granted in the 1995 Data Protection Directive. It also goes further, including other concepts that we have already embedded in our privacy principles and practices like improved transparency, providing clear information to people and giving them fine-grained privacy choices - including the ability to remove data they uploaded to our services. Today, more and more people are entrusting their data to online hosting platforms and using social networks and search engines to find information on the Web - and there are no signs of web usage slowing. So it’s vitally important that both those who provide online services and those who use them have a clear understanding of how a concept such as the right to be forgotten might apply. Hosting Platforms:
Gregory Katsianas: How Apple tracks your loca... Viviane Reding responds to Reporters Without Borders’ criticism of “right to be forgotten” In its 2012 “Enemies of the Internet” report, Reporters Without Borders voiced reservations about a proposed European Commission directive and regulation on online personal data protection that would enshrine the “right to be forgotten.” Under the proposed reform, people will be able to have their online personal data deleted “if there are no legitimate grounds for retaining it.” All websites, both those hosted inside the European Union and those hosted outside it, would be obliged to comply with requests in the absence of such grounds. This poses a real risk for freedom of information, as individuals would be able to invoke a right of deletion when content no longer suits them, a right that could override the public interest in the information remaining available. Yesterday, Reporters Without Borders received a response from the spokesperson of Viviane Reding, the European Commission vice-president responsible for justice, who is the initiator of this directive. March 14th, 2012 Dear Ms.